Interrogating Incest

Feminism, Foucault and the Law

Vikki Bell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134896523
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Winner of British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 1993 Within feminism incest has often been subsumed under a discussion of sexual violence and abuse. Yet, important as this is, there has been little account of how feminist work itself relates to other ways of talking about and understanding incest.
In Interrogating Incest Vikki Bell focuses on the issue of incest and its place in sociological theory, feminist theory and criminal law. By examining incest from a critical Foucauldian framework she considers how feminist discourse on incest itself fits into existing ways of talking about sex. Closely surveying the historical background to incest legislation and the theoretical issues involve, Vikki Bell delineates their practical implications and shows what uncomfortable questions and important dilemmas are raised by the criminalisation of incest.

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INTRODUCTION

Interrogating incest

This book is focused on the issue of incest and its place in sociological theorising, in feminist theorising, and in British criminal law. A sociological riddle, a feminist issue and a category of law—incest is all these things. But is ‘incest’ the same at each of these sites? What is incest ‘about’ in each of the discourses in which it resides? In this chapter I will briefly sketch the problematics which provide both the inspiration for this book and the context in which it should be read: first, the feminist analyses of incestuous abuse, which have radically challenged previous sociological emphasis on the incest prohibition; secondly, the provocative work of Michel Foucault, in particular his arguments about the ways in which sex has been ‘put into discourse’; and thirdly, the developments in the sociology of law and crime to which both Foucault and feminism have contributed.

INCEST, SOCIOLOGY AND FEMINISM

Incest is a topic of longstanding interest to social scientists. Over the course of a century or so, sociologists and social anthropologists have explored the incest prohibition as the example par excellence of a social rule. Many influential social scientists contributed to the debates around the prohibition of incest.¹Initially, the questions posed reflected the dominant sociological interest in finding social facts and order in life. The incest prohibition was declared a safe fact, an universal social rule, and the debates took this as their point of departure, asking either ‘how did the incest prohibition originate?’ or ‘why did societies institute such a taboo, i.e. what function does it serve?’ In these discussions, the actual occurrence of incest was considered rare; where acknowledged, it was considered outside the remit of sociology, inhabiting instead the realms of abnormal psychology, where it did not contradict the sorts of questions under investigation. If sociology’s task was to uncover the broad social patterns of life, it was not those who committed incest who were the focus of attention, but the majority who did not. Those who commit incest do not threaten the notion of the incest prohibition as a fundamental social rule because they are regarded not as social beings, but as ‘misfits’. More recently, interest in the incest prohibition has begun to question the term itself, asking whether what had previously been recognised as the incest prohibition in many different societies really means the same thing in each society. Thus it has been suggested that transposing the template of ‘the incest prohibition’ onto all societies has conflated differences in what and who is actually forbidden (see, e.g., Goody, 1971; Ember, 1983). There is still debate on the question of the incest taboo, but this interest is one that seems to have become confined within the discipline of social anthropology. Sociology’s interest in the issue of incest has turned elsewhere.

The recent ‘discovery’ of incest as a social problem has meant that the questions it raises for sociology have changed. Sexual abuse within the household has become acknowledged as a cause for public concern. The early ‘speakouts’ by women survivors revealed what had been considered a rare crime to be a widespread form of sexual abuse (Armstrong, 1978; Ward, 1984). The ensuing discussions of incest have taken place on a much more public stage than had the earlier musings of social theoreticians. Over the past decade or so, many media discussions have highlighted the issue, and in the academic arena social science no longer proffers theories of the incest prohibition. Where incest is discussed it tends to be as a social problem, sometimes alongside surveys or speculations on the extent of this problem. Thus incest seems to have changed or be in the process of changing discourse within social science. It no longer finds its place as a social rule requiring explanation as to its origin and function, but has been identified as an abusive practice, located as a social problem to be uncovered and measured.

But in the move from the emphasis on the prohibition to the emphasis on the practice, theory does not somehow get ‘left behind’. Statistics and surveys need to be explained and discussed. This inevitably means placing some form of theoreticalframework around them. In terms of ‘explaining’ the occurrence of incest it has been feminist analyses, in the main, which have taken up the challenge of framing the sociological questions. In sociology, it would be fair to say, incest has become the preserve of feminism. It has been feminist analyses which have provided the alternative voice to individualistic explanations. Looking at the social patterning of incestuous abuse, feminists have pointed to the normality of the offenders, their families and their lives. The offenders do not fit the stereotypical image of the sexual pervert which the emphasis on the prohibition as universal and universally obeyed seemed to imply. Nor do they come from any particular class or racial background (see, e.g., La Fontaine, 1990). Feminists argue that incest is a form of sexual abuse, one that is perpetrated mainly by men, and one that has to be understood within the context of a society in which men are able to exercise power over women and children in a sexualised way. The feminist analyses place incest within the range of male violences, understanding incest on the model of the feminist understanding of rape. The various renamings of incest convey this relocation: ‘incestuous assault’ (Butler, 1985); ‘Father—Daughter rape’ (Ward, 1984).

Thus feminist work has not only challenged the sociological faith in the incest prohibition by contributing to the ‘airing’ of the issue and showing the extent of the problem in terms of numbers. More than this, it presents, if in the margins of feminist texts and discussions, a profound theoretical shift in the way in which incest is conceived in the sociological imagination. As opposed to placing incest on the side of the ‘abnormal’, feminist contributions suggest that, on the contrary, given the power dynamics of male-dominated society and the understandings of sexuality which we live out, incestuous abuse is in a sense unsurprising. In feminist analysis, incest signals not the chaos it did (and does) for sociological functionalism, but an order, the familiar and familial order of patriarchy, in both its strict and its feminist sense. Incest reveals the gendered power dynamics of the society in which we exist. Importantly, feminists argue that incest cannot be regarded as asocial at all, but has to be analysed instead in direct relation to the social structures which are continually produced and reproduced as ‘normal’. Turning the earlier sociological discussions on their head, therefore, feminists argue that it is not the incest prohibition but, rather, the actual occurrence of incest which provides a key to a sociological understanding of social structure and culture.²

SHIFTING THEORETICAL GROUND: RADICAL FEMINISM AND MICHEL FOUCAULT

This book is an attempt to look at a number of theoretical questions which cluster around the issue of incest. Whilst sympathetic to the feminist discourse that situates incest as a form of sexual violence, I want to consider incest from within a different theoretical framework from the one in which it is usually placed by feminism. Previous feminist analyses of incest have tended to be directed at exposing the occurrence of incest as a form of sexual abuse perpetrated by men. This is their immediate aim. But as I have suggested, these works are by no means ‘untheoretical’. They use and create concepts that are theoretical, and present arguments within a framework of understanding that cannot be other than theoretical. This theoretical framework tends to be a radical feminist one. I label it so because these works have all the hallmarks of radical feminism. The arguments are firmly rooted in women’s experiences, exposing the collective experiences of many women, and, through presenting the similarities in those experiences, drawing the conclusion that incest is a political matter. It is an example of the personal is political in the sense that although incestuous abuse has been and is experienced by women as a personal matter, a matter of which they can speak to no one, it is in fact about relations of power between groups: between men and women, and between men and children, particularly in the context of the institution of the family.

One of the tasks of this book is to investigate the theoretical stance taken by feminists writing on incest. I do so by considering its relation to debates which have been taking place within feminist theory and feminist analyses of law. In particular, I consider how the feminist analyses of incest relate to the recent feminist interest in the usefulness of the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Foucault was by no means a feminist writer. A concern with women’s oppression barely flickers in the vast majority of his writings. So what is it about Foucault’s work that makes it worthy of such extended excavation within a feminist study? An easy answer would be simply that Foucault’s work has become widely read and used in malestream sociological work. The fact that Foucault’s work has covered many different subjects—medicine,madness, prisons, sexuality—has meant that it has been incorporated into several disciplines. He has been regarded as an innovative and exciting writer, if frustrating in his obscurity and his refusal to situate his work within the literature of the disciplines in which he is writing. Thus Foucault has become integrated into the social science of which feminist social theory forms a part. In that sense feminist exploration of his arguments is of ‘obvious’ interest and importance.

There are, however, more specific reasons why Foucault’s arguments are of interest for feminist analyses. These relate to the content of Foucault’s work, to the subject areas with which his work, and particularly his later work, was concerned. Here one finds the terms which highlight common ground between Foucault and feminism: sexuality, power and knowledge. Of these three principal themes, it is the first two which most clearly coincide with feminist concerns. Sexuality has been a focus of much feminist writing, and, in particular, of radical feminist work. There is now a growing body of feminist work which discusses the ways in which women’s sexuality is policed, denied, exploited, as a means of the social control of women. Sexuality has been posited as a, if not the, central site of women’s oppression. In the context of sexual abuse, feminist analyses have increasingly focused on the social construction of male (hetero)sexuality as a crucial component of feminist theorising. Power is also a central concept in feminist analyses. Exposing, exploring and changing the ways in which men, both individually and as a group, exercise power over women might pass relatively uncontroversially as a definition of the feminist task. The third term that I have assigned to Foucault’s work, that of knowledge, may be less clearly a feminist term. Yet the study of knowledge is certainly a concern of feminism, one of increasing debate in theoretical areas, but also in the more classical radical feminist mode of challenging ‘myths’ that prevail in our society, e.g. myths around women’s nature, motherhood, sexuality, or, indeed, myths around incest.

Having indicated a concurrence of subject areas on some general level, one must immediately note that there are also particular theoretical problems in bringing Foucault’s work into feminist discussions. Some feminist writers have found Foucault’s work highly problematic for feminist inquiry. His work on power has been described as ‘inadequate and even irrelevant’ to the needs of feminism (Hartsock, 1990:166). His work on discoursehas been said to ‘deprive [women] of the conceptual weapons with which they can understand and begin to overcome their subordination’ (Balbus, 1982:476). Danger warnings to those feminists who use Foucault are not infrequent. Are these warnings to pass unheeded? My stance is as follows. Whilst there are certainly some points of conflict that require discussion, lest a feminist utilisation of Foucault become unprincipled eclecticism, I believe the following chapters illustrate not the complete convergence of opinion, for that is not my goal, but how the work of Foucault can be useful in developing a feminist understanding of social processes in a way that does not take on his ideas at the expense of leaving feminist insights behind.

This study is not the first to suggest a use of Foucault in this sympathetic but critical way. His work has already been explored by several feminist writers. There have been articles, books and edited collections which use Foucault in a feminist context. But incest has not previously been a subject on which Foucault and feminism have been brought together. Indeed, the issue of incest does not seem the most obvious terrain on which to explore the work of Foucault and its relation to feminist thought. Partly this is so because radical feminism tends to be regarded as the most separatist strand of feminism, including separate from male dominance in academic texts. It is the strand which has most loudly declared that feminist work should stem from women’s experiences, remain ‘accessible’ and hence not get entangled with theory. Since incestuous abuse and sexual violence in general have been addressed mainly by radical feminist writers, incest might seem an unlikely subject on which to link feminism with the work of Foucault. It is also partly because what Foucault did say about child sexual abuse feminists would find objectionable. In The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction he refers to what feminists would regard as an instance of child sexual abuse as ‘these inconsequential bucolic pleasures’ (1981:33).

Nevertheless, the feminist analyses of incest have the ingredients that I have suggested form common ground between feminist theorists and Foucault, being concerned with sexuality, power and knowledge. Illustrating how the arguments of the feminist writers on incest frequently can be seen to dovetail with arguments that are taking place in other, more obviously theoretical and seemingly contrasting, feminist arenas is one of the most challenging and exciting aspects of this study.

DEVIANCE, FOUCAULT AND FEMINIST ANALYSES OF LAW

I have drawn a sketch of a movement from early macrosociological concern with social cohesion and the incest prohibition as a social fact to concerns with social problems and consideration of the social patterning of incestuous practice, the latter being prompted primarily by feminist concern and discussed in that context. Echoes of this pattern can be found in the trajectory that has been sketched by Cohen and Scull (1985) in relation to the sociology of deviance and crime. According to Cohen and Scull, the sociological task began with issues of social control in a wide sense. Thus Durkheim, for example, was interested in ‘the great problem of “social order”’ (Cohen and Scull, 1985:5). His work was concerned with the way in which society functions in a relatively orderly fashion without the need for explicitly coercive intervention. He argued that society continually reflects its social morals and norms back to itself, and that this was crucial in producing the self-regulating order that was his object of analysis.

What happened in the twentieth century, according to Cohen and Scull, was a move away from these large-scale questions about the order of society toward an emphasis on how the individual joins this order. This gave sociological questions a distinct social psychological slant. The issues were different from the issue of social control in Durkheim’s sense, or, for that matter, the similarly macro-scale problematics in Marx’s or Weber’s work. The concept of social control was reinterpreted such that it moved away from its original connotations of ‘order, authority, power and social organisation’ and became the question of how individuals come to fit into this ordered society; thus ‘the emphasis was on the processes of the individual’s induction into society—that is, the problem of socialisation’ (Cohen and Scull, 1985:5, original emphasis).

Thus, in the sociology of crime and deviance, there was a shift ‘downwards’, away from the ambitious Durkheimian questions of social facts and group processes to questions of the social processes that produce the individual ‘deviant’. Studies which traced the problem of delinquency ‘backwards’ to ‘poor parenting’, ‘broken’ homes or educational underachievement are examples of this focus on socialisation as the central issue insociology. These explanations of crime and deviance had the effect of isolating sociological questions about crime from sociological questions about the role of the state making ‘the family’ or ‘the peer group’ the focus of attention (Cohen and Scull, 1985:6).

Cohen and Scull suggest that from the late 1960s onwards work in the area of the sociology of crime and deviance has returned to more macro-sociological questions. In the sociohistorical context of the radical politics of the era, criminologists and sociologists began to consider the question ‘who decides and enforces what is criminal?’ Although never accepted as a complete theoretical explanation of crime, Becker’s (1963) labelling theory presented the possibility that the definitions of crime and the processes by which these definitions are policed and enforced is crucial. This (re)turned the attention of sociologists ‘upwards’ towards concepts of authority, power and the state, the macro-questions of early sociology. Joining with the scepticism of radical movements in psychiatry, social work and medicine, the sociology of deviance has since incorporated the study of how crime and deviance are defined, thereby incorporating historical, economic and political processes into its field of vision. Socio-legal issues, the study of how the law operates as a social institution, have become reunited with questions of the commission of ‘deviant acts’.

One author who has been highly influential in this (re)turning to questions of definition, power and the state is Michel Foucault. His Discipline and Punish (1979a) has been widely read and drawn upon in this area since it concerns questions of power in the history of the prison (amongst other institutions) and questions of how deviants and criminals are defined and written about. Foucault discusses the relationship between the operations of power and the production of knowledge in a way which implicates the sociology of deviance and crime just as much as more policy-oriented knowledges. In The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction (1981) Foucault continues this mode of inquiry, this time looking at the ways in which power both operates to produce knowledges of sexual practices and operates within those knowledges. Foucault’s work is ambitious in its historical scope and provocative in its forthright arguments. Along with other, very different writers, his work has thus been part of the relatively recent shift ‘up’ (to questions of definitions) but also ‘out’ (to questions of politics and economics) and ‘back’ (to historical questions).

In their review of the sociology of crime and deviance, Cohen and Scull fail to mention feminism as an important influence. Feminists have been writing in the field of crime and deviance since the mid-1970s, critiquing the ‘gender-blindness’ of the mainstream theories that have been put forward. But furthermore, feminists have highlighted, as they have in the social sciences more generally, the importance of taking a wider political perspective, of looking at definitions of what behaviour is and what behaviour is not acceptable. The response to sexual abuse is a case in point. The ways in which the sexual abuse of girls and women is shrugged off as ‘having a bit of fun’, the result of her ‘tempting’ the man, etc., have been well documented in the feminist literature (e.g. Wilson, 1983; Stanko, 1985). Feminists have argued that the response to sexual abuse by the police and criminal justice system reflects and reproduces that which sexual abuse receives outside law: sexual abuse has been treated not as a criminal offence, but, in the words of one judge earlier this century, as ‘the sort of thing that might happen to any man’ (Jeffreys, 1985:55).³ Whilst recent changes have improved police and legal procedures, there is still a healthy scepticism arising out of the fear that these may prove cosmetic on some levels. Arguably, therefore, feminism has played a significant part in the developments in the sociology of deviance and crime that Cohen and Scull describe and must be credited as part of the force behind the current sociological interest in issues of social control, in questions about how crime is defined and policed.

Of course, these influences on the sociology of crime do not take place in isolation from one another. Thus, as one would expect, there has also been some ‘sideways’ influence between Foucault and feminism. Whilst feminism’s influence on Foucault’s work was probably slight—as 1 have already mentioned, he never seemed to respond to feminism and never did he espouse feminist ideals—there has been, as well as the general interest discussed above, feminist interest in Foucault in the area of the sociology of law, crime and deviance. In particular, the work of Carol Smart (1989) has argued that Foucault’s work can be of use in furthering the feminist theorising of law, precisely because it provides discussion of the operations of power, knowledge and processes of definition that can be seen at work in and around law.

Smart argues that feminist analyses should work to de-centre law; many feminist perspectives have conceded too much to law, accepting its importance in the feminist struggle without questioning why it should be so central. But law is only central and important to the extent that we accept its self-definition. It is this self-definition that Smart suggests feminists need to interrogate. The perspective which Smart adopts is a Foucauldian one. She regards the law as a discourse which has a privileged position from which to exercise power. Within the parameters of the legal method, the law ‘is able to refute and disregard alternative discourses and to claim a special place in the definition of events’ (1989:162). The argument is that although other knowledges and other interpretations of events are articulated both within the legal process and outside law, they are only selectively ‘heard’. The law exercises its power to disqualify knowledges and definitions of events through the notion of a legal method. Frequently, other knowledge is heard only to the extent that it can be recast as pertinent to legal issues. If not, it is excluded. For example, in a rape case, the woman’s knowledge of events is only ‘heard’ when it touches upon what the law sees as relevant. (One might also add that the legal method can highlight aspects of the situation that the woman does not see as important in the train of events, e.g. that she knew this man before, that she had had consensual intercourse with him before, etc.) The Truth that is propounded in any particular case, therefore, is based upon a method which establishes the law’s status as knowledge and the legal personnel as experts.

The law is often confronted with other discourses in society such as medical, social work, or even feminist discourse. Smart suggests that the law invites these other discourses onto its territory, thus creating tensions around which is to define the Truth of events. Smart suggests that there can be no easy predictions...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Introduction
• 2: A Continual Contest
• 3: Familiar Stories
• 4: Telling and Taboo
• 5: What’s the Problem?
• 6: Making Monsters, Locating Sex
• 7: Conclusion
• Appendix I
• Appendix II
• Notes
• Bibliography